Connecting the Dots: Afternoon edition for Thursday, March 1, 2012

Thousands of Californians will join in a planned protest today against cuts to public education, rising tuition fees, and police violence during past Occupy demonstrations. Protesters will march from the UC Berkeley campus, Berkeley High School, and Oakland's Laney College to Frank Ogawa Plaza for a 5pm rally, while a rally at San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza will start at 4pm. The protests are expected to culminate in a march on the capitol building in Sacramento on Monday...

The capitol building may receive another shake-up in November, as opponents to the death penalty announced this morning that they have collected 800,000 signatures, more than enough to put the question on the ballot this fall. The SAFE California Act, if ratified by elections officials, would give voters the option of abolishing the death penalty and moving California's 725 death row inmates to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole...

The possibility of an amendment that would likely have rolled back Obama's policy on insurance coverage for contraception was defeated today in the US Senate, 48-51. A vote in favor would have given insurance companies and employers the ability to opt out of any aspect of the President's health plan they found objectionable...

Democrats in Sacramento find California Fish and Game Commission President Daniel Richards' behavior so objectionable that they've launched a campaign to oust him as early as next week. Although it is illegal in California to hunt mountain lions, a website posted a recent image of Richards holding a dead one with the caption, "I'm glad it's legal in Idaho." Despite the backlash, Richards has admitted the act and, so far, has no intention of resigning.